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Monday, June 26, 2017

"The Medical System As We Know Is Going To Blow Up... And Soon"

Think of the ObamaCare reform debate now playing in the US Senate as the final gurglings of polity that knows it is whirling around the drain. They’re pretending to attempt to fix a racket that comprises eight percent of the American economy. Yikes! How did that happen? At the beginning of the 20th century it was one-quarter of one percent (.25 percent) of the economy.

The standard explanation is that, first, Medicare jacked up overall healthcare activity in the 1960s, hauling in a customer-base of old folks who previously received no special treatment and were, generally, less well than non-old folk. Secondarily, technological innovation opened up so many new methods of disease control for everybody, young and old, that we’re able to treat more sickness in more complicated ways — and that drove costs up way further.

The greater part of the story remains neatly concealed within the matrix of rackets erected around the money-flows since the big cost bump-up in the 1960s, and these involve insurance companies, Big Pharma, corporatized doctors’ practices, hospital monopolies, and, of course, politicians on-the-take dividing amongst each other a colossal pool of grift that exists mainly for one simple reason: the cost of everything is hidden from public view.

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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obamacare blew it up. If the Republicans don't succeed or take months longer it will be demolished totally.

Anonymous said...

Oh, paying 10,000 new government "Administrators" to run Obamacare wouldn't have increased costs, it must have been new treatments for diseases that were discovered.

Yeah, that's it! New discoveries! Yeah! That's the ticket!

Anonymous said...

I want to go to my local insurance office and sit down with a human and decide what to buy that fits my family or lack thereof. And, listening to Rand Paul, I need to just buy what I need, not what everybody else needs.

Anonymous said...

9:52 PM...sound reasoning. I am just not sure what the political fall out would be if the Republicans did nothing and let Obamacare totally implode. That truly would leave a lot of people with no coverage. Then the Democrats would have to change their tune and blame the GOP for doing nothing. What I don't understand is why the democratic constituency isn't demanding that Schumer and Pelosi get off the high horse and agree to a bipartisan solution. Their reluctance is killing their party right before their eyes; one or two more conservative justices on the Supreme Court and it is game over. 2018 is right around the corner and if the momentum keeps moving right the Democrats are toast. Competition among insurers across state boundaries is a solution I think would work. Government needs to get OUT of the insurance industry.